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Javier E

Jared Diamond: We Could Be Living in a New Stone Age by 2114 - Mother Jones - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...uiring-minds-humanity-survival

future survival civilization collapse history crisis

shared by Javier E on 25 May 19 - No Cached
  • Either by the year 2050 we’ve succeeded in developing a sustainable economy, in which case we can then ask your question about 100 years from now, because there will be 100 years from now; or by 2050 we’ve failed to develop a sustainable economy, which means that there will no longer be first world living conditions, and there either won’t be humans 100 years from now, or those humans 100 years from now will have lifestyles similar of those of Cro-Magnons 40,000 years ago, because we’ve already stripped away the surface copper and the surface iron. If we knock ourselves out of the first world, we’re not going to be able to rebuild a first world.
  • It all depends, he says, on where we are at 2050:
  • Not everybody agrees with Diamond that we’re in such a perilous state, of course. But there is perhaps no more celebrated chronicler of why civilizations rise, and why they fall. That is, after all, why we read him. So when Diamond says we’ve got maybe 50 years to turn it around, we should at least consider the possibility that he might actually be right. For if he is, the consequences are so intolerable that anything possible should be done to avert them.
Javier E

Counting Calories to Stay Fit? There's a Trillion Little Problems With That. - Mother Jones - 0 views

www.motherjones.com/...lion-little-problems-with-that

calories diet food fiber research science

shared by Javier E on 11 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • The scientists during Atwater’s era saw the human digestive system as a single engine producing a predictable quantity of energy from a given amount of fuel.
  • Yet the human gut contains a multitude of engines, and they interact with each other in ways science is just beginning to unravel. Over the past 15 years, a fast-growing body of literature suggests that the gut microbiome—the trillions of microbes that live inside us—shapes the way we metabolize food and may play an important role in how we gain weight.
  • Antibiotics, it turns out, reconfigure your gut’s balance in favor of microbes that help us store food as body fat.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • As a result, our microbiomes are better at helping us store fat than those of our ancestors.
  • Antibiotics aren’t the only force shifting our internal ecology. Modern diets are full of processed foods and low in fiber, the kind of hard-to-break-down carbohydrates found especially in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains that are crucial for a healthy microbiome.
  • The vast majority of our internal microbes live in the far reaches of our digestive tract, the colon, explains Justin Sonnenburg, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford. Because of their location, these microscopic critters “really only get access to the dregs of what we eat”—the dietary fiber that our organs can’t digest. The microbes have evolved to process that fiber by fermenting it with enzymes.
  • feeding this fermentation process appears to be crucial for averting weight gain and diseases like obesity and Type 2 diabetes
  • fiber supplements might also trigger liver cancer.
  • “Right now, the only useful advice I could give somebody would be to eat foods naturally rich in fiber,” he says, like bran cereal and every kind of bean you can think of. Other winners included pears, avocados, apples, seeds, and nuts.
  • The Institute of Medicine recommends that women eat 25 grams and men 38 grams of fiber every day, but Americans only get about 15 grams on average.
  • The choice of whether to lunch on a cup of black beans or five chicken nuggets—which both contain about 220 calories—just got a whole lot easier.
Javier E

Google Has Picked an Answer for You-Too Bad It's Often Wrong - WSJ - 1 views

www.wsj.com/...-often-get-it-wrong-1510847867

google search engines search information bias social media knowledge

shared by Javier E on 17 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Google became the world’s go-to source of information by ranking billions of links from millions of sources. Now, for many queries, the internet giant is presenting itself as the authority on truth by promoting a single search result as the answer.
  • The promoted answers, called featured snippets, are outlined in boxes above other results and presented in larger type, often with images. Google’s voice assistant sometimes reads them aloud
  • They give Google’s secret algorithms even greater power to shape public opinion, given that surveys show people consider search engines their most-trusted source of information, over traditional media or social media.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Google’s featured answers are feeding a raging global debate about the ability of Silicon Valley companies to influence society. Google and other internet giants are under intensifying scrutiny over the power of their products and their vulnerability to bias or manipulation.
  • Featured snippets are “generated algorithmically and [are] a reflection of what people are searching for and what’s available on the web,” the company said in an April blog post. “This can sometimes lead to results that are unexpected, inaccurate or offensive.”
  • Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., handles almost all internet searches. Featured snippets appear on about 40% of results for searches formed as questions
  • An algorithm chooses featured snippets from websites in part by how closely they appear to satisfy a user’s question, factoring in Google’s measure of a source’s authority and its ranking in the search results.
  • By answering questions directly, Google aims to make the search engine more appealing to users and the advertisers that chase them. The answers’ real estate is so attractive that there is a budding marketing industry around tailoring content so it becomes a featured snippet.
  • as Google expanded the use of featured snippets, it has relied more often on less authoritative sources, such as purveyors of top-10 lists and gossipy clickbait.
  • “For them to wield their algorithm like this is very worrisome,” she said. “This is how people learn about the world.”
Javier E

'The Longing for Less' Gets at the Big Appeal of Minimalism - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ss-minimalism-kyle-chayka.html

minimalism materialism simplicity

shared by Javier E on 25 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Delving into art, architecture, music and philosophy, he wants to learn why the idea of “less is more” keeps resurfacing.
  • He sees it as a shadow to material progress, a reaction to abundance, a manifestation of civilization’s discontents
  • Chayka cycles through different ideas in order to find those he wants to keep.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • More generative for him are the examples of artists who became known as Minimalists even as they disavowed the term.
  • What’s most striking about Chayka’s minimalist gestures is how frail they seem next to the larger upheavals that are taking place.
  • Discussing the renunciatory philosophy of the Stoics and Henry David Thoreau, he discerns “a strategy of avoidance, especially in moments when society feels chaotic or catastrophic.” There’s a strain of this in contemporary lifestyle minimalism, which offers self-protection and retreat: “Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad.”
  • The minimalism that Chayka seeks encourages not an escape from the world but a deeper engagement with it
  • Chayka’s journey ends in a rock garden in Kyoto, where serene contemplation contends with jostling visitors.
  • “Up through the 20th century, material accumulation and stability made sense as forms of security,” Chayka writes. “Little of this feels true today.” Tangible goods now cost exceedingly less, and intangible “forms of security” cost exceedingly more.
  • After all, it’s unlikely that the tchotchkes or the new TV set will toss you into financial straits; it’s the college tuition that will put you into crushing debt, the very real possibility you’ll outlive your meager retirement account, or the medical treatment not covered by insurance.
  • Reading Chayka’s book put me in mind of a longing for less stuff, and a longing for more support.
Javier E

Desperately Seeking Hope and Help for Your Nerves? Try Reading 'Hope and Help for Your Nerves' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...erves-claire-weekes-virus.html

hope anxiety panic treatment attack psychology

shared by Javier E on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Five years ago, at my therapist’s urging, I kept track of every panic attack that washed over me: my record for a single day was 132. Soon I was diagnosed with agoraphobia and panic disorder, which is essentially a preoccupation with recurring panic attacks
  • it was a grey, mass-market paperback called “Hope and Help for Your Nerves,” with a front-cover blurb from Ann Landers, that became my talisman
  • Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass. That’s the recipe that Dr. Claire Weekes, the Australian clinician and relatively underrecognized pioneer of modern anxiety treatment, established in a series of books
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • This advice, when you encounter it in the midst of a cycle of breath-shortening attacks, may sound cruel.
  • First, Weekes says, you must decide to truly experience the panic, to let it burst out into your fingers, your gut, your skull.
  • Then, sink into it like a warm pool.
  • Finally, rather than mentally kicking your legs to keep your nose out of the water, flip onto your back. “Stop holding tensely onto yourself,” she writes, “trying to control your fear, trying ‘to do something about it’ while subjecting yourself to constant self-analysis.” Just float through it, observing that it’s happening and recognizing that it will end.
  • Weekes promises that “every unwelcome sensation can be banished, and you can regain peace of mind and body.”
  • her advice, hard-earned through her own lifelong anxiety, which would wake her out of sleep to torment her, is so simple that “Hope and Help” essentially turns into a soothing repetition of two points.
  • First, that what we’re mostly afraid of is fear. And second, that “by your own anxiety you are producing the very feelings you dislike so much.”
  • you can best fight your panic by refusing to fight the panic.
  • And in short: It works.
  • a cultish devotion to her simple and direct advice means that today the book is prized by the readers, including me, whom it has guided out of emotional suffocation. A scroll through its Amazon reviews turns up one gushing convert after another.
  • Weekes’s work has the particular effect of pushing me to see that something lies beyond the moments of slip-sliding terror I f
  • this one has potent advice for the present moment, when many of us feel we must push back our disquiet more tenaciously than ever. If you’re afraid, then be afraid. You might float through to the other side.
Javier E

History News Network | Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About Donald Trump's America - 1 views

historynewsnetwork.org/...162131

politics psychology brain science stupid evolution bias context institutions

shared by Javier E on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  •  Just How Stupid Are We?  Facing the Truth About the American Voter.  The book is filled with statistics like these:● A majority of Americans don’t know which party is in control of Congress.  ● A majority can’t name the chief justice of the Supreme Court.  ● A majority don’t know we have three branches of government.
  • suddenly mainstream media pundits have discovered how ignorant millions of voters are.  See this and this and this and this.  More importantly, the concern with low-information voters has become widespread.  Many are now wondering what country they’re living in. 
  • The answer science gives us (the title of my last book and this essay notwithstanding) is not that people fall for slick charlatans like Trump because they’re stupid.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  •  The problem is that we humans didn’t evolve to live in the world in which we find ourselves.  As the social scientists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby put it, the human mind was “designed to solve the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. These stone age priorities produced a brain far better at solving some problems than others.” 
  • there are four failings common to human beings as a result of our Stone-Age brain that hinder us in politics.
  • why are we this way?  Science suggests that one reason is that we evolved to win in social settings and in such situations the truth doesn't matter as much as sheer doggedness
  • Second, we find it hard to size up politicians correctly.  The reason for this is that we rely on instant impressions. 
  • This stops voters from worrying that they need to bolster their impressions by consulting experts and reading news stories from a broad array of ideological viewpoints.  Why study when you can rely on your gut instinct?
  • Third, we aren’t inclined to reward politicians who tell us hard truths.
  • First, most people find it easy to ignore politics because it usually involves people they don’t know.  As human beings we evolved to care about people in our immediate vicinity.  Our nervous system kicks into action usually only when we meet people face-to-face
  •  This has left millions of voters on their own.  Lacking information, millions do what you would expect.  They go with their gut
  • We don't want the truth to prevail, as Harvard's Steven Pinker informs us, we want our version of the truth to prevail, for in the end what we're really concerned with is maintaining our status or enhancing it.
  • Fourth, we frequently fail to show empathy in circumstances that clearly cry out for it.
  • We evolved to show empathy for people we know.  It takes special effort to empathize with people who don’t dress like us or look like us.
  • long-term we need to teach voters not to trust their instincts in politics because our instincts often don’t work.
  • Doing politics in a modern mass democracy, in other words, is an unnatural act.
  • Teaching this lesson doesn’t sound like a job for historians, but in one way it is.  Studying history is all about putting events into context. And as it turns out, voters need to learn the importance of context.
  • Given the mismatch between our Stone-Age brain and the problems we face in the 21st century, we should only trust our political instincts when those instincts are serviceable in a modern context.  If they aren’t (and most of the time they aren't), then higher order cognitive thinking is required.
  • Just why mass ignorance seems to be afflicting our politics at this moment is a complicated question.  But here again history can be helpful.  The answer seems to be that the institutions voters formerly could turn to for help have withered.
  • most of the time we return to a state of well-being by simply ignoring the evidence we find discomforting.  This is known as Disconfirmation Bias and it afflicts all of us
  • ut cultural norms can be established that help us overcome our natural inclinations.
  • don’t have much confidence that people in general will be willing on their own to undertake the effort.
sissij

Gloria Steinem: Women Have 'Chick Flicks.' What About Men? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ick-flicks-what-about-men.html

new york times bias language social media

shared by sissij on 05 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • As the flight attendant read the choices aloud, a young man across the aisle said, “I don’t watch chick flicks!”
  • I wasn’t challenging his preference, but I did question the logic of his term.
  • especially if it had been written by women.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Think about it: If “Anna Karenina" had been by Leah Tolstoy, or “The Scarlet Letter” by Nancy Hawthorne or “A Doll’s House” by Henrietta Ibsen — if “The Invisible Man” had been “The Invisible Woman” — would they have been hailed as classics?
  • Indeed, as long as men are taken seriously when they write about the female half of the world — and women are not taken seriously when writing about ourselves, much less about men and public affairs
  • His “chick flick” label might help him avoid certain movies, but shouldn’t he have a label to guide him toward movies he actually liked?
  • Bias is, as always, unfair to everyone.
  • sissij on 05 Mar 17
     
    I think this is gender stereotyping. People tend to make the assumption that women are more limited than men because they appear so emotional and irrational. However, in brain science, there is no real difference between male and female. The logic fallacies and flaws in reasoning stay true for everybody, not a specific gender. We also tends to label things to simplify. However, there are always exceptions to labels, as we learned in science. Labeling may filter out some really good stuff just based on our imprecise impression. -Sissi (3/4/2017)
sandrine_h

How Headlines Change the Way We Think - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...headlines-change-way-think

writing knowledge

shared by sandrine_h on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • a headline changes the way people read an article and the way they remember it. The headline frames the rest of the experience.
  • Psychologists have long known that first impressions really do matter—what we see, hear, feel, or experience in our first encounter with something colors how we process the rest of it. Articles are no exception.
  • By drawing attention to certain details or facts, a headline can affect what existing knowledge is activated in your head.
dicindioha

When Mismatched Voices and Lips Make Your Brain Play Tricks - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...lip-reading-mcgurk-effect.html

shared by dicindioha on 05 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The good news is, the human brain is flexible and efficient. This helps us make sense of the world. But the bad news is, the human brain is flexible and efficient. This means the brain can sometimes make mistakes.
    • dicindioha
      dicindioha on 05 Mar 17
       
      This is a great way to say what we talked about with human perception and survival reflexes!
  • You can watch this tension play out when the brain tries to connect auditory and visual speech.
  • By comparing mathematical models for how the brain integrates senses important in detecting speech, they found that the brain uses vision, hearing and experience when making sense of speech.
    • dicindioha
      dicindioha on 05 Mar 17
       
      mathematical modeling involved too
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “But it turns out that what their face is doing is actually profoundly influencing what you are perceiving.”
  • The brain asks itself: “Is it likely that these two things go together or not?”
  • “In science we’ve assumed that people do that, always put together everything,” Dr. Beauchamp said. “It turns out that might not be right.”
  • brain most likely processes information about lip movements and sound in a part of the brain called the superior temporal sulcus.
  • clinicians understand and improve your hearing as you age, Dr. Magnotti said.
  • dicindioha on 05 Mar 17
     
    This is really interesting because it relates to sense perception, and how we connect our eyes and ears. Our brains try to make sense of things and put things together that might not always go together. It's always funny when you watch a video that you saw before with a new voice over, and it really looks like it's happening. I did not think of this as being connected to TOK, but it is. I also found it really interesting that learning more about the McGurk effect could help clinicians improve hearing as we get older.
dicindioha

Trump Is Expected to Sign Orders That Could Expand Access to Fossil Fuels - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...monuments-energy-drilling.html

shared by dicindioha on 26 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • After moving last month against Barack Obama’s efforts to limit fossil fuel exploration and combat climate change, President Trump will complete his effort to overturn environmental policy this week, signing two executive orders to expand offshore drilling and roll back conservation on public lands.
  • The president is then expected to follow up on Friday with another executive order aimed at opening up protected waters in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to offshore drilling.
  • Friday’s order is also expected to call for the lifting of a permanent ban on drilling in an area including many of those same waters — a measure Mr. Obama issued in December 2016 in a last-ditch effort to protect his environmental legacy from his drilling-enthusiast successor.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • he orders are not likely to lead either to significant new energy development or to job creation in the near future.
  • And the process of undoing Obama-era regulations will take more than a flick of Mr. Trump’s pen.
  • Environmental groups warn that just opening the door to future drilling in pristine federal lands and waters could lead to more disasters like the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which sent millions of barrels of oil to the shorelines of coastal states, killing wildlife and destroying fragile ecosystems. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • “Offshore drilling in the Atlantic and the Arctic is still dirty and dangerous.”
  • In the century since Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, presidents have used the law to put hundreds of millions of acres of land and waters off limits to development, and no president has undone a predecessor’s designations.
  • But even his allies noted that such a move would be unlikely to lead to rigs in the water for several years, and that it could easily be reversed by Mr. Trump’s successor.
  • “It will involve a lot of effort by agencies. It will involve lawsuits. And hopefully it will involve Congress, so they can cement these” changes in place.
  • dicindioha on 26 Apr 17
     
    We are not listening to the professionals about climate change. People will most likely look back at this history and blame us for the future of the environment if we don't work now to fix it. If these plans eventually go through, the climate will be much harder to fix, and this is part of the problem we will have to deal with.
Javier E

Op-Ed Contributor - Scientifically Tested Tests - NYTimes.com - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...20engel.html

testing learning

shared by Javier E on 21 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • we should come up with assessments that truly measure the qualities of well-educated children: the ability to understand what they read; an interest in using books to gain knowledge; the capacity to know when a problem calls for mathematics and quantification; the agility to move from concrete examples to abstract principles and back again; the ability to think about a situation in several different ways; and a dynamic working knowledge of the society in which they live.
  • In recent years, psychologists have found ways to measure things as subtle as the forces that govern our moral choices and the thought processes that underlie unconscious stereotyping. And many promising techniques already used by child development experts could provide a starting point for improving school assessments.
Javier E

E.P.A. Dismisses Members of Major Scientific Review Board - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-scientific-review-board.html

policy science trump research

shared by Javier E on 08 May 17 - No Cached
  • Members of the board say they have reviewed the E.P.A.’s scientific research on the public health impact of leaking underground fuel tanks, the toxicity of the chemicals used to clean up oil spills, and the effects of the spread of bark beetles caused by a warming climate. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A larger, corresponding panel, the 47-member Science Advisory Board, advises the agency on what areas it should conduct research in and evaluates the scientific integrity of some of its regulations.
  • Both boards, which until now have been composed almost entirely of academic research scientists, have long been targets of political attacks. Congressional Republicans and industry groups have sought to either change their composition or weaken their influence on the environmental regulatory process.
  • “In recent years, S.A.B. experts have become nothing more than rubber stamps who approve all of the E.P.A.’s regulations,” Mr. Smith said at a House hearing in February. “The E.P.A. routinely stacks this board with friendly scientists who receive millions of dollars in grants from the federal government. The conflict of interest here is clear.”
Javier E

How a Polymath Mastered Math-and So Can You - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-mathand-so-can-you-1494622700

polymath math knowledge learning mindshift psychology education

shared by Javier E on 13 May 17 - No Cached
  • How do you strengthen your mind as you age?
  • Physical exercise helps encourage neuron growth. Some forms of meditation improve creativity, while others sharpen focus. In one study, “reading a book for around 3½ hours a week was shown to extend the lifespan . . . by something like two to three years.” Learning a foreign language “gives a workout to the very centers of the brain that are most affected by the aging process, so it’s super healthy.”
  • “Action videogames are incredibly helpful in keeping you sharp,” Ms. Oakley says. “They’ve been shown by research—top-notch research—to make a big difference in your attentional centers.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • By trial and error, Ms. Oakley had learned how to learn: “The higher I went, it started to gradually make more and more sense.”
  • “The way you learn intensively for a language is very similar to learning well in math and science,”
  • “In learning math and science through K-12, it’s long been held that practice and repetition will kill your creativity,” she says. “One mistake we make in the school system is we emphasize understanding. But if you don’t build those neural circuits with practice, it’ll all slip away. You can understand out the wazoo, but it’ll just disappear if you’re not practicing with it.”
  • In places like China and India, “practice and repetition and rote and memorization are really important parts of education.” She sees value in both methods: “There are real benefits for Western approaches—that it really does help with creativity. And there are also real benefits to Asian approaches—that it builds a solid foundation in the most difficult disciplines, math and science.
  • The best education would actually be a combination of both approaches.”
  • She defines a “mindshift” as “a change in your outlook that occurs through intensive learning”—such as her own mastery of math and engineering.
  • The book is filled with advice for people who are considering a career change or who seek to develop “an attitude of lifelong learning,” even in retirement.
  • Her progression from desultory student to respected scholar led her to a sideline in the study of learning itself. She’s published two books on the subject, “A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even if You Flunked Algebra)” (2014) and the new “Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential.
  • they developed a massive open online course, “Learning How to Learn,” which by some measures is the world’s most popular MOOC
sissij

Resist the Internet - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...resist-the-internet.html

new york times technology social media bias

shared by sissij on 12 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • So now it’s time to turn to the real threat to the human future: the one in your pocket or on your desk, the one you might be reading this column on right now.
  • your day-to-day, minute-to-minute existence is dominated by a compulsion to check email and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram with a frequency that bears no relationship to any communicative need.
  • Used within reasonable limits, of course, these devices also offer us new graces. But we are not using them within reasonable limits. They are the masters; we are not.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Which is why we need a social and political movement — digital temperance, if you will — to take back some control.
  • Temperance doesn’t have to mean teetotaling; it can simply mean a culture of restraint that tries to keep a specific product in its place. And the internet, like alcohol, may be an example of a technology that should be sensibly restricted in custom and in law.
  • Meanwhile the age of the internet has been, thus far, an era of bubbles, stagnation and democratic decay — hardly a golden age whose customs must be left inviolate.
  • sissij on 12 Mar 17
     
    Although I agree with the author on his point that Internet does cut down our time spent in natural world and traditional socialization, I don't think this problem is serious or bad enough that Internet should be sensibly restricted in custom and in LAW. Internet is the product of the changing of the society. There is always losing coming with gain. I think what we gain from the Internet is greater than what we lose. We do need temperance for internet, but I think it's ones' personal right to decide whether to control himself or not. Internet is more life people's personal life style rather than something that need to be regulated. --Sissi (3/12/2017)
sissij

Gaymoji: A New Language for That Search - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...gay-emoji-gaymoji-digital.html

new york times language social media bias

shared by sissij on 16 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • You don’t need a degree in semiotics to read meaning into an eggplant balanced on a ruler or peach with an old-fashioned telephone receiver on top. That the former is the universally recognized internet symbol for a large male member and the latter visual shorthand for a booty call is something most any 16-year-old could all too readily explain.
  • And so, starting this week, Grindr will offer to users a set of trademarked emoji, called Gaymoji — 500 icons that function as visual shorthand for terms and acts and states of being that seem funnier, breezier and less freighted with complication when rendered in cartoon form in place of words.
  • That is, toward a visual language of rainbow unicorns, bears, otters and handcuffs — to cite some of the images available in the first set of 100 free Gaymoji symbols.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Partly, this project started because the current set of emojis set by some international board were limited and not evolving fast enough for us,” said Mr. Simkhai, who in certain ways fits the stereotype of a gay man in West Hollywood: a lithe, gym-fit, hairless nonsmoker who enjoys dancing at gay circuit parties.
  • Like most every other human in the developed world, they had their heads buried in their screens.
  • “We’re all so attached to our phones that when people talk about the notion of the computer melding with the human and ask when that’s going to happen, I say it already has,” Mr. Simkhai said. He added that the prospect of being deprived of a phone for 20 minutes induced in him “the highest level of anxiety I can possibly have.”
  • Gaymoji, then, serve as both conversational and even existential placeholders, Ms. McCulloch said: “You’re using them to say, ‘I’m still here and I still want to be talking to you.’”
  • As if to emphasized that assertion, a reporter combing through the new set of Gaymoji in search of something that would symbolize a person of Mr. Simkhai’s vintage could find only one.It was an image of a gray-haired daddy holding aloft a credit card.
  • sissij on 16 Mar 17
     
    Emoji is becoming more and more popular in people's chatting and comments on social medias. People use emoji because they faster, more convenient, and funnier. And now people can even design their own emoji to have it suit for various conditions. But can emoji really replace the letters and language? I sometimes feel that emoji is so fast and cheap. It only take a click to sent an emoji and people usually sent without any further thoughts because it is so quick and easy. Although emoji is sometimes make the comments seem cuter and funnier, it makes people's comments less hearty. I think typing in some letters in the comments does oblige us to think about what we are saying before we sent it out. --Sissi (3/15/2017)
sissij

The Increasing Significance of the Decline of Men - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nce-of-the-decline-of-men.html

new york times social media research bias

shared by sissij on 17 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • At one end of the scale, men continue to dominate.
  • But at the other end of the scale, men of all races and ethnicities are dropping out of the work force, abusing opioids and falling behind women in both college attendance and graduation rates.
  • From 1979 to 2007, seven percent of men and 16 percent of women with middle-skill jobs lost their positions, according to the Dallas Fed study. Four percent of these men moved to low-skill work, and 3 percent moved to high-skill jobs. Almost all the women, 15 percent, moved into high-skill jobs, with only 1 percent moving to low-skill work.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • For boys and girls raised in two-parent households, there were only modest differences between the sexes in terms of success at school, and boys tended to earn more than their sisters in early adulthood.
  • At the same time, the divorce rate for college graduates has declined from 34.8 percent among those born between 1950 and 1955 to 29.9 percent among those born between 1957 and 1964. In contrast, the divorce rate for those without college degrees increased over the same period from 44.3 percent to 50.6 percent.
  • First, there are irreversible changes in the workplace, particularly the rise of jobs requiring social skills (even STEM jobs) that will continue to make it hard for men who lack those skills.
  • Females consistently score higher on tests of emotional and social intelligence. Sex differences in sociability and social perceptiveness have been shown to have biological origins, with differences appearing in infancy and higher levels of fetal testosterone associated with lower scores on tests of social intelligence.
  • This vulnerability, in turn, makes boys more susceptible toattention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and conduct disorders as well as the epigenetic mechanisms that can account for the recent widespread increase of these disorders in U.S. culture.
  • Schore argues that a major factor in rising dysfunction among boys and men in this country is the failure of the United States to provide longer periods of paid parental leave, with the result that many infants are placed in day care when they are six weeks old.
  • Men are really going to have to change their act or have big problems. I think of big guys from the cave days, guys who were good at lifting stuff and hunting and the things we got genetically selected out for. During the industrial revolution that wasn’t so bad, but it’s not going to be there anymore.
  • Second, male children suffer more from restricted or nonexistent parental leave policies and contemporary child care arrangements, as well as from growing up in single-parent households. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • It has been a longstanding objective of right-wing regimes to push women back into traditional gender roles. Is that what’s going on here? Or could it be something less pernicious and more important?
  • sissij on 17 Mar 17
     
    I think this research is very interesting. It takes a different perspective when discussing gender issues. It notices that there are actually a decline of men in the society. Although there are still wage inequality and other gender problems that women are usually in disadvantages, men are having more and more disadvantages now as the the society shift from physical work to mental work. As the society evolved, the social structure also evolves. Gender equality means we should put equal attention to all genders (there are more than two). --Sissi (3/16/2017)
Javier E

Depressed by Politics? Just Let Go - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...d-by-politics-just-let-go.html

politics happiness research psychology social media control

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Even after controlling for income, education, age, gender, race, marital status and political views, being “very interested in politics” drove up the likelihood of reporting being “not too happy” about life by about eight percentage points.
  • behavioral science shows that the link might just be causal through what psychologists call “external locus of control,” which refers to a belief that external forces (such as politics) have a large impact on one’s life.
  • An external locus of control brings unhappiness.
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  • an external locus is correlated with worse academic achievement, more stress and higher levels of depression.
  • this external locus of control has been increasing among students since the 1960s. No surprise here, as young people have been increasingly exposed to trigger warnings, sensitivity about microaggressions and safe spaces.
  • However, the external locus of control can also be based on an illusion that something affects us — meaning that the resulting unhappiness is unnecessary.
  • an external locus of control is not necessarily inaccurate. If someone is directly affected by a political action
  • “This is maya.” He explained that we needlessly attach our fate to external things, bringing misery. The simple solution: Just let go.
  • Many of us consume political news and commentary in a compulsive, concupiscent sort of way, voluntarily subjecting ourselves to gratuitous information and stimuli, particularly on social media.
  • find a way to bring politics more into your sphere of influence so it no longer qualifies as an external locus of contro
  • nstead, get involved in a tangible way — volunteering, donating money or even running for office. This transforms you from victim of political circumstance to problem solver.
  • Second, pay less attention to politics as entertainment. Read the news once a day
sissij

Trump Is a Chinese Agent - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-is-a-chinese-agent.html

new york times social media bias

shared by sissij on 29 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The big story everyone is chasing is whether President Trump is a Russian stooge. Wrong. That’s all a smoke screen. Trump is actually a Chinese agent. He is clearly out to make China great again. Just look at the facts.
  • That’s called l-e-v-e-r-a-g-e, and Trump just threw it away … because he promised to in the campaign — without, I’d bet, ever reading TPP. What a chump! I can still hear the clinking of champagne glasses in Beijing.
  • O.K., Mr. President, let’s assume for a second that climate change is a hoax. Do you believe in math?
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  • How can America be great if we don’t dominate the next great global industry — clean power?
  • Finally, Trump wants to slash the State Department and foreign aid budgets and make it harder for people to immigrate to America, particularly Muslims. This opens the way for China to expand its influence across the developing world and signals the smartest math and science students in the world to start their start-ups overseas and not in America.
  • sissij on 29 Mar 17
     
    After we watched about storytelling in politics today in TOK class, I think it is very interesting that people with good stories are often very popular. In entertainment industry, it is very common that the stars create stories intentionally to keep them hot and famous. Sometimes, they even create scandals and affairs to make their story interesting to the general population. I think the news are keep telling stories about Donald Trump, or Trump intentionally make himself a great story to be told. People that with different perspectives have different stories to tell about Trump. Trump is very "famous" in this sense. --Sissi (3/29/2017)
Javier E

Video Games Aren't Addictive - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...deo-games-arent-addictive.html

video game addiction research psychology

shared by Javier E on 03 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • the neuroscientific analogy: that the areas in the brain associated with the pleasures of drug use are the same as those associated with the pleasures of playing video games. This is true but not illuminating. These areas of the brain — those that produce and respond to the neurotransmitter dopamine — are involved in just about any pleasurable activity: having sex, enjoying a nice conversation, eating good food, reading a book, using methamphetamines.
  • A large-scale study of internet-based games recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry bears out our skepticism about this “addiction.” Using the American Psychiatric Association’s own metrics for ascertaining psychiatric disorder, the study’s researchers found that at most 1 percent of video game players might exhibit characteristics of an addiction and that the games were significantly less addictive than, say, gambling.
  • More damning, the study found that almost none of those classified as being possibly addicted to video games experienced negative outcomes from this addiction. That is, the mental, physical and social health of these potential “addicts” was not different from that of individuals who were not addicted to video games. This suggests that the diagnosis of addiction doesn’t make much sense to begin with
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  • Consider a common diagnostic question used to help identify addiction, such as “I always use X to relax after a bad day.” Well, if X is methamphetamine, that’s a worrisome choice, one that presumably indicates addiction. But if X is playing video games, how is that different from unwinding after work by knitting, watching sports or playing bridge?
dicindioha

After Britain Attack, Trump Unleashes a Twitter Storm - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ttack-trump-twitter-storm.html

shared by dicindioha on 04 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people,” he wrote on Twitter. “If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.”
  • “Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now?” he wrote on Sunday morning. “That’s because they used knives and a truck!” Advertisement Continue reading the main story On Saturday night, he wrote: “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
  • “You have to be kidding me?!: Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan,” the younger Mr. Trump wrote at the time.Mr. Trump’s post left the impression that Mr. Khan was minimizing the importance of terrorist attacks. But in fact, he was saying that terrorism was a reality that a big city needed to be prepared to prevent and respond to vigorously.
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  • Asked later during a television interview about the president’s son, Mr. Khan dismissed the post. “I’m not going to respond to a tweet from Donald Trump Jr.,” he said on CNN. “I’ve been doing far more important things over the last 24 hours.”
  • dicindioha on 04 Jun 17
     
    using Twitter is Trump's way of communicating; interesting for a president. it seems it portrays him as a less serious president, unfortunately. social media can be useful, but Trump uses it in ways that are not always appropriate. sometimes it is very difficult to correctly interpret the tone of a statement over the internet when there is no real human voice behind it.
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